How is Demo looking in 7.2?

[Xeranath]

HOW?

Demo has honestly made me so sad. The rotation is so... straightforward and dull.

I really do love the idea that pets do the bulk of our DPS but I really wishing was more interesting. The only interesting part is seeing how fat I can make TC when I get some nice RNG.

I guess I really suck. Rotation is straight forward, yet while I can pull 600ish as Aff on a dummy, I struggle to pass 450 as demo. Only 35 traits, but that wouldn't make up for it. I feel like demo is a spec you're either god at, or you're not. No real middle ground average demo players.

[Ilir]

uh ?

I have no issue in solo content... put your dot on everything and then watch them get instakilled once it ticks. Like there's nothing hard or broken about demo solo capability. Sure it takes "longer" but while you're running around dotting everything it doesn't really matter imo.

With the new traits and the new set bonuses... demo looks quite promising imo.

[noremac]

Different guilds mate. Different priorities. I know how to maximize damage and I do that on krosus heroic farm, but for mythic Krosus I have to, even if it is a straight dps loss for me

Yeah obviously peoples roles will vary from guild to guild and even from week to week but I just find it hard to believe that your raid comp is so bad that they are relying on an Affliction Lock to burst down small adds which is one of our weaknesses. Seems like some people are slacking when they would be better fit for the duty.

[Deleted]

I highly doubt Aff will ever go down in power unless they nerf all the spells to the ground.

The spec is based around weapon traits, and not only are they adding many extra weapon traits, but they are also adding more predictive methods of generating souls for higher Reap uptime. Not to mention Aff scales the best with gear so its just going to get out of control.

thats wrong, aff sclaes nowhere near as good as it used to. Demo is going to be bonkers in ToS, new traits, set bonuses and legendaries have such an insane synergy its mental!

[Deleted]

Yeah obviously peoples roles will vary from guild to guild and even from week to week but I just find it hard to believe that your raid comp is so bad that they are relying on an Affliction Lock to burst down small adds which is one of our weaknesses. Seems like some people are slacking when they would be better fit for the duty.

I will try out MG AC SL SE next time I am at mythic Krosus seeing how that goes just throwing 5~ corruptions on the adds and continue on boss.
Our guild is not the best when it comes to perfectly assigning classes to their highest potential, but to be fair with like 3 shadows 1 demo 2 affliction 2 assa rogues you don't have the best burst for the adds as a raid.

[Deleted]

The problem with Demo is that it's terribly boring to play and lacks all the "cool things" it used to have.

In Draenor i was a big green demon casting cataclysm and waves of fel energy while commanding an army of imps and a wrathguard....

Exactly, I was the Green Monster on Kormrok M that destroyed all the Hands in 3 GCDs, dealing top dps with 70% hands dmg, making the progress possible.

The same with Blackhand, jumping down and destroying the first set of adds on the balcony. That was awesome, building and managing my fury/HoG stacks and unleashing the pain at key moments. If they just removed the HoG stacking, maybe do something with the soulfire stacks, I would say the spec was pretty easy to manage.

[Deleted]

Indeed. I hope but I really dont belive that they will give us back some spells like chaos wave or demonic leap. Currently Demo is soooo boring turret spec.

[Deleted]

thats wrong, aff sclaes nowhere near as good as it used to. Demo is going to be bonkers in ToS, new traits, set bonuses and legendaries have such an insane synergy its mental!

Tbh Demo relies too much on haste (I think it's like 1.6 vs 1 Int). It forces us to accept gear that is low ilvl, unlike Aff that is much closer (1.4 for mastery and 1.2 for haste/crit, with 1.0 for int).

My demo rings are Legendary + 855 with mayor haste + versa + socket. My 2 Aff rings are both 880 with mayor Mastery, though any ring without versa works.

[Galbatroix]

It's what I ended up doing too in the end. But the original point of this discussion was that Affliction can pull off better singletarget dps whilst still doing better add damage. Kind of why I kinda dislike playing my spec atm. Not to mention we are pushing our healers to the extreme to make sure we get as many dps as possible. Affliction self healing would be very good there.

Yeah i see where you are coming from, I stay with Demonology because i find the play stile much more enjoyable than Affliction and their single target DPS is very close. Do you have BiS legendaries because it makes Demonology do very well and right on par with Affliction. But honestly if you are getting more than 3 to 4 adds (that are up front) you guild isn't doing the right mechanics. We took over 100 pulls and by the last 15 our guild was finally figuring out that soaking correctly was the most important part, and on our kill we had 2 wipes before (1% and 2%) and then we killed it with 13 seconds to go.

[Lucrece]

Affliction does not even come close to demo on ST, let alone cleave. Do people even bother to check warcraft logs before they spout this kind of crap?

[Galbatroix]

Affliction does not even come close to demo on ST, let alone cleave. Do people even bother to check warcraft logs before they spout this kind of crap?

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11/#boss=1842 - Krosus 75th percentile
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11/#boss=1863 - Star Augur 75th percentile

I think you need to look again. Those are about as close to ST fights you get in Nighthold (I added Krosus because both specs have awful burst DPS so either spec swapping to the fire elementals will hurt about the same). Affliction out DPS's Demonology on both of those (not by big margins, but it does.)

[Lucrece]

Those fights not only involve serious movement and add damage, which penalizes demo, but with the dying adds affliction can then pad boss damage with wrath of consumption.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=90&boss=1886

High Botanist mythic, demo pulls ahead.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=90&boss=1872

Elisande, demo pulls ahead (both demo and affliction do negligible add cleave anyways)

Even taking the overall, both specs are doing incredibly well competitively, and demo does 2-3 target cleave even better than affliction.

Despite the ridiculous amounts of movement in Nighthold which punish demo far more than they do affliction.

If at some point they made demonic empowerment castable on the move, it would alleviate a lot of the penalties with demo in movement heavy raids.

The best part about Demo is that it isn't an RNG shitfest. Affliction has layer upon layer of RNG to get those top parses. Soul, soul shards, whether adds generate souls, whether agony will generate soul, Fatal Echoes RNG.

The swings for affliction make it far more unreliable a performer than demo by far.

[Walrock]

Those fights not only involve serious movement and add damage, which penalizes demo, but with the dying adds affliction can then pad boss damage with wrath of consumption.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=90&boss=1886

High Botanist mythic, demo pulls ahead.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...t=90&boss=1872

Elisande, demo pulls ahead (both demo and affliction do negligible add cleave anyways)

WoC is not padding, it increases all of your damage, regardless if it's boss or add dmg.
It's like saying delaying thakiel for more imps bc you are about to get 3 doom ticks on adds is padding, ridiculous.

And how is Krosus and Augur a "serious movement fight"? They are pretty much patchwerk except Krosus Add Phase (which lasts like 3x15-20secs) and Augur P4 (which is patchwerk +1 big add/few very small adds)

And just look at the overall logs, we have like 40-50 high aff logs with like 3-5 demo logs between them.

Im not saying that Demo is shit or bad or just worse than Aff, I would love for it to be a high risk high reward spec, but right know the damage potential for Aff is just higher and easier to reach.

And the RNG part in Affli is pretty much only souls, you normally swim in shards, Fatal Echoes procs are about managing your reap/ua uptime which is just part of your spec and if there is an add you tag it to get souls/woc stacks.

Yes Demo is more consistent, but at the cost for lower potential, like stat sticks vs on-use trinkets.


People need to stop to take criticism of their spec as an insult, it's just criticism.
And please stop spreading false information as result of this...

[trm90]

WoC is not padding, it increases all of your damage, regardless if it's boss or add dmg.
It's like saying delaying thakiel for more imps bc you are about to get 3 doom ticks on adds is padding, ridiculous.

And how is Krosus and Augur a "serious movement fight"? They are pretty much patchwerk except Krosus Add Phase (which lasts like 3x15-20secs) and Augur P4 (which is patchwerk +1 big add/few very small adds)

And just look at the overall logs, we have like 40-50 high aff logs with like 3-5 demo logs between them.

Im not saying that Demo is shit or bad or just worse than Aff, I would love for it to be a high risk high reward spec, but right know the damage potential for Aff is just higher and easier to reach.

And the RNG part in Affli is pretty much only souls, you normally swim in shards, Fatal Echoes procs are about managing your reap/ua uptime which is just part of your spec and if there is an add you tag it to get souls/woc stacks.

Yes Demo is more consistent, but at the cost for lower potential, like stat sticks vs on-use trinkets.


People need to stop to take criticism of their spec as an insult, it's just criticism.
And please stop spreading false information as result of this...

The damage potential is higher for Aff but there is still an element of RNG. I know you addressed this but compared to Demo, the core part of Affs kit is still more heavily RNG dependent. As long as Soul Conduit doesnt become a dominant talent, all the shards you build and spend on Demo are well under your control. You know when Doom is gonna tick and you know your bolts are gonna generate a shard. RNG does exist for Demo (demonic calling, discord, double doom) but they are not core parts of the spec.

The point I'm making here is that Demo's 95th percentiles aren't as contaminated with RNG like Aff/Destro is and if someone is looking to practice and consistently reach higher damage potential, it's more promising for Demo. Anyway, I'm quite surprised players found Affliction more fun than Demo (or maybe they just wanted the easier spec), no one has been able to explain to me what exactly they dislike about Demo's playstyle :P

[Keltas]

The damage potential is higher for Aff but there is still an element of RNG. I know you addressed this but compared to Demo, the core part of Affs kit is still more heavily RNG dependent. As long as Soul Conduit doesnt become a dominant talent, all the shards you build and spend on Demo are well under your control. You know when Doom is gonna tick and you know your bolts are gonna generate a shard. RNG does exist for Demo (demonic calling, discord, double doom) but they are not core parts of the spec.

The point I'm making here is that Demo's 95th percentiles aren't as contaminated with RNG like Aff/Destro is and if someone is looking to practice and consistently reach higher damage potential, it's more promising for Demo. Anyway, I'm quite surprised players found Affliction more fun than Demo (or maybe they just wanted the easier spec), no one has been able to explain to me what exactly they dislike about Demo's playstyle :P

Well if affliction and demo are equal, which I believe they are right now if you play both equally with similar gear, affliction is just better because of how much self healing it can pump out.

I don't think many people realize how much you heal yourself. I can ignore almost every single raid mechanic and just out heal it myself. I like to go demo for normal/heroic clears since aff gets boring, and the difference is huge.

I think that's a major factor people don't talk about because they don't pay attention to it, but once they lose it they want it back.

[tonberi]

Demonology overall is least RNG dependant and it is what I love about the spec. You control the shard generation and know exactly what is coming the next 15 seconds, so you can plan your movement and even if a fight is movement heavy, you know what the fuck is happening in your rotation, and you should know when the movement is about to come in. I've had 0 problems progressing as Demonology, heck I'd go Demonology for the last two bosses too, but Gul'dan is more of an ADD CONTROL fight and that is what Demonology sucks at, short lived single target adds without cooldowns they really suck. But any other boss you can outperform the other two specs.

Skorpyron you have huge boss damage, you generate extra imps from the small scorps, you should be on top 3 boss damage if not the best. This boss fight is trivial so it doesn't really matter.

Chronomatic Anomaly, you should have the best boss damage here aswell, as long as your raid is not full of single target specs, the adds should die fine. I think Demo outperforms the other two specs here, regardless of skill level. Perhaps Affliction is better but it's not an insane amount.

Trilliax requires a lot of movement but it shouldn't prevent you from dealing more damage than Affliction or Destruction spec, since you control the flow of your shards, you should be able to time the movement with when you have 0 shards and all your demons are already empowered, that is why I think Demo outperforms the other two specs.

Spellblade, here it is obvious that demo is better. These adds are longlived and I don't think there is a single other spec that outperforms Demonology on sustained AoE, especially if you go Darkglare and have Doom belt. And the amazing part is that this Sustained AoE buffs your single target boss damage significantly, which I don't think any other spec does.

Tichondrius, same as above, sustained AoE, passive cleave, huge boss damage.

Krosus, really good too, your 2nd Doomguard will be up for execute, probably outperformed by Affliction. Only downside is that you have bad add damage, the movement in this fight shouldn't punish you too much.


Botanist, this is all about phase 3, and Demonology has really good sustained bossdamage, and if your cooldowns line up with bloodlust in last phase, you'll be doing top dps, doesn't require RNG like Affliction does, but is probably outperformed by affli with good RNG.


I don't get why people are saying Demo is boring, it's really predictable spec and least RNG dependant, it feels right that you control exactly when you do damage. Maybe it looks boring on paper but if you get into it it is really fun, and is in no way performing worse than the other specs, even the statistics say that they perform the best, and that is for a reason.

People that are afraid of the spec, please could you tell what the problems are exactly, I'd like to pinpoint them and see if they're valid.

Demonology is good on every PvE aspect. Burst AoE(a little bit RNG dependant cuz Gold Trait), Sustained AoE, Sustained Single Target and to a certain grade Burst Single Target(TKC) too, what is there to not love? The rotation? I don't understand

EDIT:
To respond to OP, Demonology looks to be in a really good spot for 7.2, nothing has changed with the spec overall, your imps and Doom will still be doing the most damage, and they're adding traits which will buff your imps by 20%, so it's going to be absolutely crazy on paper.

[noremac]

Affliction does not even come close to demo on ST, let alone cleave. Do people even bother to check warcraft logs before they spout this kind of crap?

Aff is definitely the strongest "single target" spec that Warlocks currently have, maybe even the strongest single target out of every class, simply because there are no true single target fights in Nighthold. Even the "single target" fights like Krosus, Tich, and Star Augur all spawn little adds throughout the fight at some point which is where Aff just goes nuts because we go from utilizing 1/3 artifact gold traits to utilizing all 3. Wrath of Consumption alone is 20% increased damage with a 5 stack and Reap Souls up.

If this was 7.0 and we were still in EN I would agree with you. Demo was definitely king back then, but Aff scales much better with gear and artifact traits plus it got the most buffs between then and now. If you were to compare both the specs just standing still turreting a dummy with no mechanics Demo may still have the edge, but the fact is none of the fights in NH are like that. Aff is less punished by movement and gains more from add waves throughout the fight, which is pretty much every fight in the raid.

[Shandalar]

Anyway, I'm quite surprised players found Affliction more fun than Demo (or maybe they just wanted the easier spec), no one has been able to explain to me what exactly they dislike about Demo's playstyle :P

Probably the turret mode + spamming DE. But the second part will be smoother with the new T20 4 piece bonus.

[tonberi]

Probably the turret mode + spamming DE. But the second part will be smoother with the new T20 4 piece bonus.

Affliction is punished more by movement than Demonology if they have to move during draining moment, and thats where most of their damage is coming from. Atleast demo can move between globals, and when they have 0 shards. The only time demo is punished by movement is when they just used up all their soul shards and cant find a moment to Empower the demons, but thats just bad planning since most fights in nighthold have predictable movement

- - - Updated - - -

The only bad part which is kinda huge is the fact that you cant control your demons to swap to a target, also it would be insane if the pets had a charges function like BM hunters do. I hate when i summon my doomguard it has to run 10 yards to get in range for the target, or also when I summon my serv Felguard it doesnt charge the target and starts spinning in the middle of nothing. THESE are just bad design and could easily be fixed by Blizzard, which would improve the quality of demonology alot

[Deleted]

Summary of comments :
"I can't handle the playstyle, so I suck, so the spec sucks"

Eeeeh....